“No Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn type ‘Mississippi’ was our river. No majestic paddle steamers wended their way there. You may spy on the odd occasion mucky kids, like yours truly, in an old long tin bath. We wielded our makeshift oars very grateful for the assistance of the current. Travel upstream was too much of an ‘ask’, we preferred the land method of heading up river, carrying our craft upside down overhead, like a band of marauding Vikings for another voyage.”

Image: the river Rhondda at Gelli. Reproduced by kind permission of Rhondda Cynon Taf Libraries.